When I was (part 2)

I had a job that was important to me. I did my job well, I was respected, but I was overworked. Hub and I were newly married by only about a year. And I got sick. I was so tired, so much, and I ended up with walking pneumonia. I took a leave of absence from my job to try to recover…they were understanding at first. They let me go on short term medical leave, but my illness got worse. I got over the pneumonia, but I was weak and tired…way more than was normal after a virus. So we started going to doctors (which I talk about in other blog posts), but during this time I began writing. I wrote a book, staying up late into the night, writing until my arm was weak and my fingers couldn’t grasp the pen anymore. I slept late into the day while Hub went to work to support us…taking time off to go to doctor’s appointments with me when he could. Other times, my mother took me to see the doctors. But the writing was cathartic, and it seemed to give me life–a reason to find consciousness every day–as I struggled with my health. And with the anger and fear and anxiety and depression that followed me every day. I had no idea what was happening to me physically, but the writing kept me in another world that was normal and sane and happy.

My grandfather was sick…he wasn’t well during my wedding. Less than a year later, he died. I was so sick that I wasn’t able to see him much during that time. I got my book published the summer of 2001, so I was wrapped up in that excitement, even as I was still struggling with my health. And I’d been out of work for over 9 months, and my company finally told me they couldn’t continue to hold my job open. They said they would try to find another position for me when I was ready to return, but I was too angry with them, so I quit. I also wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to work full-time again, because my recovery was so slow. So I started a new book. Again, it kept me alert and sane, grounded in my life even as I lived in my book and with my characters. As I was making my way through my illness, with my writing, with my new world of not supporting myself and relying on my husband for everything, 9/11 happened.

For years I struggled with my health, with doctors, with not knowing and anxiety…fear. And through those years I wrote books and published them. A couple of times I published through other publishers, then I decided to open a publishing company of my own. Just as I got sick the second time. It took me much longer to get the publishing company up and running because of my second illness, but I managed to do it. I had help from family, but the majority of the work was my responsibility. I did everything except accounting, and even then I did some of it because I tracked and paid royalties to our authors. And I ran this publishing company–which became a huge part of my life–for ten years. Along with publishing my own books. But the industry changed massively over the last ten years, and small publishers like us were becoming obsolete. Between that and the issues I went through with my Prilosec-fever and subsequent anxiety issues, I finally closed the publishing company this past fall.

I published another book last summer, but I haven’t really written one in a couple of years. Although I feel the urge to write, I haven’t really been able to. And it makes me feel lost and alone, without a purpose. Which makes me sad. Writing has always been the thing I turned to when I felt lost or in pain, alone, fearful, anxious, unhappy. Whether it was poetry or fiction, I always fall back to my writing. This time I am writing on this blog, but it isn’t exactly the same as the creative type writing I’ve done in the past. I miss it terribly, but it’s just outside my reach.